the united states government will do what is necessary to protect america, our forces, our allies, and friends from attacks from countries outside of europe. not only has secretary clinton made the point, so has secretary gates, admiral mullen, general o'reilly, vice president biden and president obama. and i have said it before and i'm going to say it again, we will continue to develop and deploy effective missile defenses and to develop a budget even in these difficult times to implement our missile defense strategy. now, let me turn to europe and russia since our plans for a european missile defense architecture have gotten so much attention there. the united states has no more important security relationship than we do with our nato allies in europe. that relationship continues to grow. when i first started working on missile defense issues around 1997, our nato and european allies were very skeptical, to say the least. but there's been a huge change in europe's attitude. and particularly nato's attitude toward missile defense. i've been impressed with my counterparts and the discu